Great West Casualty Company Blog

When it comes to operating a trucking company, you often don’t know about gaps in your coverage until you file a claim that isn’t covered. Uncovered losses can cost you thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars and can often be avoided. The best way to understand where gaps in coverage exist is to make sure your agent fully understands your operation and has a complete picture of what services you provide.

Complying with the Hours-of-Service (HOS) regulations can be challenging for drivers and motor carriers. With the implementation of electronic logging devices and recent HOS changes, keeping drivers and operations staff up to date and in compliance is essential to avoiding preventable violations and potentially damaging the company’s public image in the Safety Measurement System (SMS). To help in this area, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) released the Education Tool for Hours of Service (ETHOS).

Roadside inspections are a part of the trucking industry, but drivers can play a big role in determining the frequency with which they occur. Three factors that commonly trigger roadside inspections are the environment, the condition of the truck, and the driver’s behavior. Read the information below and ask yourself if there are actions you can take to reduce the likelihood of a roadside inspection and violations.

Source: Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance  The Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance (CVSA) has set May 4-6 as the dates for this year’s International Roadcheck. Over that 72-hour period, commercial motor vehicle inspectors in jurisdictions throughout the United States, Canada, and Mexico will conduct inspections on commercial motor vehicles and drivers.

  Each year, pedestrians are struck and killed by motor vehicles due to distracted walking. Additionally, work-related injuries and fatalities caused by employees not paying attention to where they are walking have caused workers compensation costs and out-of-pocket expenses for employees to skyrocket. Incidents involving distracted walking are 100 percent preventable. Read the information below about the three types of distractions and what you can do to protect yourself.

Distractions are a high-risk exposure that motor carriers cannot overlook. Incidents like a distracted employee slipping in the shop or losing focus while driving and hitting another vehicle can have a lasting, negative impact on your company’s bottom line.

Training is essential to helping any organization meet its business objectives. In fact, the number one requirement of any training effort is that it must hold value for the company. Otherwise, training is a waste of time and resources. From onboarding new employees to conducting road tests with drivers, employee training serves an invaluable purpose and demands proper planning, execution, and follow-up. Unfortunately, this is where training usually fails, especially on the follow-up. Below is a brief list of reasons why training often fails in each of these areas and how you can have better chances of success.

Mistakes happen. As frustrating as that may sound, mistakes are inevitable because humans are imperfect beings. In fact, most crashes and injuries are the result of human error rather than factors outside of a worker’s control. Depending on the severity of the error, an employee making a mistake can be understandable. It is important for managers and supervisors to separate acceptable mistakes from unacceptable mistakes and to be mindful of how they respond to each.

Every truck driver has a pattern to the way he or she drives. These patterns, or habits, can be good or bad, or more precisely, safe or unsafe. A driver who integrates safety into all of his or her driving decisions, regardless of the environment, has established a pattern of behavior that reduces the risk of a crash. On the flipside, pattern driving refers to practicing unsafe behaviors, such as speeding and tailgating. Pattern driving also can occur when a driver gets too comfortable with his or her route or routines and lets his or her guard down. This type of pattern driving is common when drivers run dedicated routes to the same customers day after day and become complacent. In this case, complacency becomes a distraction, and the driver loses focus of his or her surroundings and the potential hazards that could lead to a crash. Read the list of driving patterns below and ask yourself if there are actions you can take to improve your driving skills.

Slips, trips, and falls are one of the leading causes of workplace injuries. For drivers, these types of injuries commonly occur when improperly entering or exiting the cab and trailer. The result can be quite painful and, in some cases, prove fatal. The key to avoiding a preventable injury is to recognize the hazards that contribute to slip, trip, and fall injuries associated with entering and exiting equipment, and knowing how to protect yourself from harm. Read this information and put the recommendations into practice to help protect yourself and others.